BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Occupational Health and Safety
This article is part of the Research TopicNew Perspectives in Workplace Safety and Employee Well-Being in the Age of Technology, Sustainability, and DigitalizationView all articles
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on telework and short sickness absences among Finnish knowledge workers
Provisionally accepted
- 1Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Helsinki, Finland
- 2Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
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Introduction: Longitudinal studies are rare for associations between telework and sickness absence (SA). This prospective cohort study aimed to investigate short (1-3 days) SA from 2019 to 2023 among a cohort of Finnish knowledge workers and the role of telework in short SA. Methods: Complete employer-owned register data on SA and telework were available from four organizations for 2019-2023, comprising 924 employees. Weekly means of telework days/week and short (1-3 days) SA days were calculated and analyzed using conditional Poisson with fixed-effects to obtain incidence rate ratios (IRR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Results: The levels of short SA were low from 2019 to 2023, while telework increased at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and remained at an elevated level. In a fully adjusted model, each one-day increase in telework was associated with a higher likelihood of short SA (IRR 1.35, 95%CI 1.22, 1.50). Conclusions: Telework has become a central way of working among Finnish knowledge workers since the COVID-19 pandemic, while short SA has remained at a low level. A higher number of weekly teleworking days may be linked to a higher likelihood of short SA, indicating that workplaces should pay special attention to their employees' well-being and health.
Keywords: Telework, Sick Leave, Longitudinal, Occupational Health, Well-being
Received: 11 Aug 2025; Accepted: 29 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ropponen and Haapakangas. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Annina Ropponen, annina.ropponen@ttl.fi
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